In Thai and Lao languages, Mekong roughly translates as ‘mother of rivers.’ As one of the world’s largest waterways it stretches more than 4,000 kilometers thrusting through China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea.

For wildlife enthusiasts in the region, these are exciting times. A horned lizard and rainbow-headed snake were among 163 delightful new species documented last year by scientists alongside 10 endangered Irrawaddy dolphin calves. Fewer than 90 Irrawaddy dolphins exist on the planet.

But all is not well.

In January 2016, build on the 260-megawatt hydroelectric Don Sahong dam began less than a mile from Laos’ border with Cambodia. The area is home to a trans-boundary dolphin pool where numbers are critical. Just three remain. A figure the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warns is ‘no longer viable. (Functionally Extinct)

In recent months the dolphins have moved out of their two-kilometer preservation into areas where illegal fishing methods are rife. Villagers blame the daily boom of dynamite used to blast rocks in dam construction.

“Even when you are inside the water, it’s very loud,” says Mekong river ranger, Sok Laing, responsible for patrolling the dolphins’ protected area. “The noise is too loud and dolphins need to live in a place that is quiet,” he adds.

It’s a worry for villagers who rely on the thousands of tourists the dolphins bring yearly.

“Only local (protected) fishing is allowed in this part of the river but where the dolphins are now, no one is responsible for controlling,” says Bu Maen, a 27-year-old boat driver.

His village, Anlong Svay Thom, in Cambodia’s Stung Treng province, lies just south of the dam. It’s a smattering of wooden frame houses built on stilts in the Khmer fashion that overlook the river.

A new road was constructed to provide greater access to the secluded village. This boosted business for those driving tourists across the waters.

“Customers increased because of the road but now the dolphins have gone I don’t know what will happen,” Maen says.

Dolphin habitats threatened by human activity

Irrawaddy dolphins in Cambodia can be found in Stung Treng and Kratie, forming pools they generally live in for life.

These freshwater marine mammals are one of the oldest creatures in the world, long symbolizing the health of a river but forced now into near extinction by human activity.

Illegal fishermen are wise to the times when dynamite is used on the construction site say villagers. Some employ homemade bombs to blast fish; particularly in the new area the dolphins seek refuge.

“Poachers are very intelligent and very smart,” says Rin Narouen, conservation area manager at WWF Cambodia. “They use it on the same day so nobody can catch them.”

He believes if no action is taken, “they [dolphins] will become extinct.”

If such dire prognosis were to happen, “it means the income of people here will be affected,” says Laing. “Right now people come here because they want to see dolphins, if the dolphins are gone then no tourists will come again.”

Why governments are damming the Mekong

Around 120 million in Southeast Asia have no access to electricity. South East Asia Energy Outlook

In Cambodia this equates to 44 percent of its population according to Word Bank figures. Access To Energy

For governments that border the river, the cheaper and greener solution is to dam. In China for example, 88 percent of energy consumption uses fossil fuels. Fossil Fuel Energy Consumption

Large hydropower dams already exist on the Mekong in China, but more than 100 are planned by Mekong bordering countries. Of these, 11 will dam the river’s mainstream in Laos and Cambodia built by Thai, Malaysian, Chinese, and Vietnamese developers.

Laos, the poorest of its neighbors with a GDP of just $12.37 billion has declared its ambition to be ‘the battery of Southeast Asia.’ It will host nine of the dams for much needed revenue generation despite not benefitting from the electricity produced. For example, Don Sahong’s energy will be exported mainly to Thailand and Cambodia.

 Life in Preah Rumkel remains as it has for centuries

Fish is a staple sought from a river containing over 1,000 species of fish. The Mekong accounts for an astonishing one quarter of the world’s freshwater catch.  

Every morning, 29-year-old fisherman Horn Phoeun heads onto the Mekong.

“Before there was a lot of fish but now there are not many,” says Phoeun.  He has frequently changed the pools he fishes from in order to accommodate for the loss of catch. He blames illegal fishing and dams.

“It takes longer to catch the same amount of fish,” he says. Like many other villagers, he is considering switching to farming seeds and nuts. But it’s an expensive occupation costing $750 more to run and one riddled with risks of flooding.

“My father was a fisherman, my whole generation were fisherman,” he adds.

Upstream the Lower Sesan 2 dam is almost complete.

Some 34 miles east of the Don Sahong, fishermen and women gather on the muddy banks of the river’s Sesan channel with reams of mesh nets cascading around them.

Almost lost in the fabric of the net, they must decide whether any further attempts at fishing today will bring in a catch.

Here most come from Pluk Village in northern Cambodia, close to the $800m Lower Sesan 2 dam nearing completion on a Mekong tributary. It’s a venture between China’s Lancang Hydropower International Energy, Cambodia’s Royal Group, and Vietnam’s EVN International.

Utha Camy, a fisherman in his late 50s, stoops beside the nets. “Before the dams I would have caught more than 5 kilos by now,” says Camy. “And if I kept fishing from now until 6.30pm I would have caught a further 10 kilos.”

Today, after an unsettling 6am rise he has caught just one fish in five hours. The number of dams already built mean irregular variations in water levels that interfere with fish migration and spawning. There is no longer enough fish to go around.

“We all know this but right now there is no job for us to do, so we continue to just fish,” shrugs Camy.

A 2012 study by researchers from the U.S. and Cambodia estimated that the Sesan 2 dam once complete would reduce fish catch by 9 percent. Fish Biodiversity, Food Security & Hydropower in the Mekong River

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) oversees dam constructions on the lower Mekong through a 1995 agreement. It’s a committee of four member nations-Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. China is not part of the voluntary commission and it’s yet to resolve disagreements on projects.

And as the Ecologist has reported previously, many of the dams have gone ahead without backing from all member states. Death By Strangulation

So many dams are catastrophic for fisheries activists warn

According to conservationists, Cambodia’s 400-megawatt Sesan 2 dam will prevent sediment travel down to the Mekong’s delta, depriving it of nutrients needed for aquatic life and rice production.

A two and a half year study submitted by Vietnam to the MRC in 2016 concluded that there were “high to very high adverse effects on some of the key sectors and environmental resources in Cambodia and Vietnam,” as a result of planned dams.

Around 40 percent of Vietnam’s rice stock is grown in the delta. The country is still recovering from last year’s scathing El Nino induced drought – its worst in a century. [http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/vietnam-hit-by-worst/2562802.html].

“The further downstream a hydropower is sited, the more impact it will have on fisheries, notably on fish migration,” Marc Goichot, water lead at WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme said via email.

In the case of Don Sahong, for example the dam would block the only channel known as a year round route for migrating fish, vital to around 60 million people who rely on the protein the Mekong’s fish provide.

Mega First Corporation, the dam’s developers have in the past dismissed concerns, saying a new fish passage would be built.

“What the developers have done is widen some of the other surrounding channels and blast clear them out so that they are passable for fish migration as alternative routes,” says Maureen Harris, Southeast Asia program director at advocacy group International Rivers. “The problem is they’ve been doing this as they build the dam.”

Scientists believe there is lack of sufficient evidence that fish would migrate through new channels. The Myth of Sustainable Hydropower

“There are no example of success in large tropical rivers,” says Goichot.

In northern Cambodia villagers battle developers

Bai Pumsen, a 30-year-old rice farmer and his family of five were relocated six months ago to make way for the Sesan 2. His old home in Kbal Romeas will be flooded along with 5,000 others when the dam opens later this year.

Pumsen’s resettlement village currently called Kbal Romeas II is a regimented mix of yellow and blue concrete houses alongside traditional wooden builds.

Each family is entitled to either a house or $6,000 to build a new home as compensation and a 12-acre land to farm. New villages boast schools, health centers, and crucially electricity. However villagers complain the land isn’t ideal for farming, and is far from freshwater sources.

“Staying here is more difficult,” says Pumsen. “More than 50 families are waiting with no job to do.”

Land is yet to be cleared for agriculture.

Like Pumsen, many frequently make the two hour round trip back to their old rice fields for work and food and are demanding to move back.

“Here I have to spend a lot of money,” says 31-year-old mother of two, Sarun Nan. “Before there was no need to buy food, we just go down to the river and catch fish … now also for drinking and cooking I need to buy water.”

Nan and her husband commute by motorbike to their old village to fish and hunt in the forest. “I don’t know what I will do if I cannot continue to go,” she says.

There are some in Kbal Romeas who refuse to move to the resettlement site having seen how their former neighbours are struggling.

Dams are not the problem say experts but they need to be better planned

“It is easy to assess which ones will have the greatest negative impacts and the most positive. Common sense would be to prioritise the ones with least negative impacts, and postpone the ones with the greatest,” says Goichot. “Don Sahong, Lower Sesan, are in the 20 percent group with the highest negative impacts. They should not have been prioritised.”

Others point to more ecological means of energy generation through solar power. But these are difficult to attract financial investment and slow to generate immediate revenue.

“Typically what’s usually done in these projects is an economic impact assessment, where they weigh up the benefit but not the costs,” believes Mark Zeitoun, professor of water policy and security, at the University of East Anglia in England.

Zeitoun has been researching similar environmental issues on the $2.4 billion Merowe dam built on the River Nile in Northern Sudan. It’s displaced more than 50,000 people, blocking fish migration and degrading water quality. Impacts of Merowe Dam

In the US, older dams are being decommissioned. After its largest dam removal – the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon dam – salmon have returned to the Elwha river in Washington after almost a century of absence say scientists. River Restoration

But, “decommissioning is very expensive, much more expensive than building a dam,” adds Zeitoun. “Once you build a dam you are locked into it for a very long time.”

“The dams are affecting everyone who live along the river,” reflects Laing as he sits, legs crossed in front of his house looking ahead towards the calm waters. “We have to try to find a way to keep the fish and the dolphins within the Mekong. But how I don’t know.”

This author

Nosmot Gbadamosi is a freelance journalist based in London. She can be followed on Twitter @nosmotg

Nicolas Axelrod and Thomas Cristofoletti are co-founders of Ruom, a collective of journalists based in Asia. Read stories here [http://www.ruom.net/feature-stories/]

More information: Save the Mekong [https://savethemekong.org] campaign.

Also on The Ecologist: How the largest inland fisheries in the world are being destroyed. Destuction of the world’s largest inland fisheries

We Indians have historically had a deep emotional connect with our rivers.

We see them as extension of our society, often elevating them to godly status.

While most rivers are treated as females (Nadi), there are instances where rivers have been treated as males (‘Nad‘). Many female rivers are also categorized as ‘Kanya‘ or, unmarried female.

A glimpse of how Indian rivers are personified can be also found in the writings of Kaka Kelkar, in his famous book ‘Jeevan Leela‘. However, despite our deep cultural association with rivers, today, our understanding of rivers has changed remarkably.

A river is now treated as key to economic development measured by the big dams, navigation and other developmental projects which has diluted our understanding of a river from a life-line to a resource available for exploitation.

Recently the New Zealand government has granted the status of a ‘living entity’ to Whanganui river. Afterwards, the Uttarakhand High Court has also given similar legal status to River Ganga and River Yamuna.

Few days ago, in a public event Shri Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh promised that his government will soon introduce a bill to give River Narmada (see photo) the rights of a living being. It’s expected that other state governments will follow soon.

Before this, however, it is critical for both citizens and the government to recognize and understand what constitutes the identity and existence of a river. Every river has its own characteristics, its own behaviour and an entirely unique ecology which it supports.

Only after that we can ask the secondary question-what do we mean by ‘rights’ of a river and what constitutes its ‘best interest’?

Rights of a river

For this, we should first and foremost understand the river and how it functions. Then, the peculiar characteristics of our rivers need to be accepted, respected and protected if we really want to make ‘rights’ of a river meaningful.

When a river flows, it erodes the rocks and soil and carries the sediments along with its water and ultimately deposits them in its lower stretches before it meets its destiny in the ocean. Erosion, transportation and deposition are three basic life functions of any river.

For effective erosion and transportation of sediments, it requires uninterrupted flow (aviral) which would mean unobstructed flow of ‘water’ and ‘sediments’. The deposition of sediments occurs mainly when the river flows through plains during floods and at the river mouth. Islands like the Sundarbans are result of such accumulation of sediments.

This process has been severely affected in last few decades due to obstruction of the River Ganga in the upstream. This has resulted in regular deposition of huge volume of sediments much earlier in states like Bihar and West Bengal which has now become a massive problem in itself.

A river not just flow longitudinally, but it also requires horizontal space to expand its spread, which in simple terms can be called flood. A river also repairs itself, creating new ways to flow which can be termed as a river’s expression.

Floods are often seen as a form of disaster. However, flooding is a very important ecological process which helps in rejuvenation of soils with nutrients as well as recharging groundwater. A flood, these days is disastrous because we have interrupted with the natural journey of a river or encroached its space for expansion.

Allowing our rivers to live – not just exist

We have several examples in India where attempts to control a River through embankments have miserably failed. Instead of transferring fertile fine silt, deposition of coarse sands have made thousands of hectares of land barren as we saw in 2008 historic flood when river Kosi breached an embankment causing irreparable damage in northern Bihar.

Uttarakhand floods in 2013 and Chennai floods in 2015 show how obstructing the natural flow of rivers can destroy to life and property. Therefore, our own interests are intimately tied with those of the river and the need to demarcate the floodplains of our rivers along with strong laws cannot be over-emphasised.

As the river plays through its journey, it bends and meanders, when it flows through shallower gradient, often part of active floodplains. Meandering also leads to formation of Oxbow lakes, where a portion of river gets cut off from mainstream and becomes a natural reservoir on its bank supporting both aquatic and terrestrial life besides providing water for irrigation.

Protection of floodplains should essentially protect the river’s right to meander as well.

A river is also not just stream of water flowing from upstream to downstream collecting surface water from its tributaries and surface of its catchment areas. The initial source can be a glacier in Himalayan region or even a lake / small stream like in case of most of non-Himalayan rivers. The primary source of water of a river during dry seasons come from subsurface water reservoirs which is known as ‘base flow’ – the groundwater discharge of the stream.

This base flow, though may not be visible actually keeps a river alive. With increasing dependence on groundwater for human needs, this base flow has drastically reduced. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that abstraction of groundwater be closely regulated and monitored and alternatives like creating offshore reservoirs and wetlands be promoted.

What are the ‘best interests’ of a river?

When we grant anybody a legal entity, naturally the question would arise – who will decide its best interest and who can be its custodian or guardian? Given the mixed perceptions and conflicting understanding of river, it is a significant challenge for a country like India.

While most governments are exploring possibilities of optimal utilisation of rivers as a resource, several environmental experts advocate protection of these rivers, its natural flow and its ecology for their and our own sustenance. Though both the concerns are well recognized, yet the hindsight suggests economic interests taking over ecological concerns.

For example, one thing which was very hard to be established and remained ‘an elephant in the room’ was the non-use value of the river. Governments and even big financial institutions like the World Bank have consistently neglected the non-use values of our rivers in their cost-benefit analysis of ‘developmental projects’ on the pretext that the same cannot be calculated with any precision.

But does the use value of river exhaust its whole value, or is there something beyond economics? Are there cultural, historical, emotional, aesthetic, religious and spiritual dimensions to a river’s being that make it far more than a mere ‘resource’?

The government seems to be recognizing the cultural flow of a river through programs like ‘Namami Gange’ and ‘Namami Narmade’ and look like taking steps in the right direction. However, river activists have equally criticized the same government for promoting dams, navigational dredging, river-inter-linking and undertaking constructions on river banks and floodplains which go against the best interest of the river.

Even the important law like ‘River Regulation Zone’ is pending with the Centre, though the roadmap was prepared in 2013 which itself casts doubts on the seriousness of such slogans and programmes.

Time to start correcting past mistakes

It is also important to understand that today we have hardly any major rivers remaining in its natural character and many of them are severely ill and dying either at the hands of engineering marvels or through poisons discharged into them through sewage and effluents.

In this, what place does a river enjoy in our imagination of sustainable development, whose sustenance and whose development are we talking about?

Therefore, we must strive to keep the best interest of the River at top priority and start by correcting our mistakes in past. That would certainly require some unconventional decisions by government and willingness to make sacrifices by the people.

Debadityo Sinha is an Environmentalist based in New Delhi. He is founder of Vindhya Bachao Abhiyan and has litigated extensively for protection of rivers, landscapes and other environmental justice issues.

In a recent landmark judgment on his petition, National Green Tribunal has quashed the Environmental Clearance of a 1320 MW thermal power plant which was planning to abstract water from River Ganga on the basis of insufficient impact assessment studies and concealment of facts. He was also member of the civil society delegation which convinced World Bank to reconsider the proposal of construction of barrages for National Waterways-1.

He is also working as Senior Resident Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi. He can be contacted at debadityo@gmail.com, and tweets @debadityo.

How we farm and feed ourselves says a lot about our society’s priorities.

Like many things in today’s world, food has largely been forced into hungry jaws of hyper-capitalism driven by the twin pistons of ‘economies of scale’ and ‘efficiency’.

Large-scale, industrial agri-business is proffered as the only way we can feed ourselves in the face of growing populations and dwindling resources.

But this is just one of the myths of our techno-capitalist worldview. And it needn’t be this way.

Small-scale, agro-ecological farming can, and does, provide a model for agriculture that provide enough food, equitably, ecologically and economically.

The Ecological Land Co-operative is a social enterprise helps new entrants into ecological agriculture in England supporting the growth of farming that works with the grain of nature.

Land, land, everywhere – but not a patch to farm!

Farming and horticulture are incredibly hard to get into for new entrants. It’s no surprise the average age of a British farmer stands at 59.

High set up costs, high costs of housing, a history of land amalgamation and a planning system anathema to small-scale agriculture make the barriers for new entrants seemingly insurmountable.

The price of agricultural land is now trading at record price levels of approximately £8,500 per acre. Between 2000-2010 new farm entrants accounted for just 4% of agricultural land purchasers. Wedded to this is the cost of rural housing. The average house price in rural England has more than doubled over the past decade to over £250,000, but the average salary is still £21,000.

The historical trend in land amalgamation has lead to the availability of a fewer number of predominantly large farms for purchase. This has happened at the same time that the number of County Farms and smallholdings has declined. The result is a substantial body of people who wish to farm an ecological smallholding but are unable to afford to do so.

“New entrants to farming have no possibility of buying a farm in England”, says Zoe Wangler, Executive Director of the Ecological Land Co-operative. “The cost of land and rural housing is too high. Yet new entrants have the passion, vision and skills needed to reduce the negative environmental impacts of conventional farming and globalised food distribution.”

The Ecological Land Co-operative

The core business of the ELC is the creation of smallholding clusters. The ELC buys agricultural land and seeks planning permission for new residential smallholdings as well as providing shared infrastructure. The ‘starter farms’ are then leased to smallholders – well below market rates – on a long and secure leasehold.

Sites are protected for affordability and ecological agriculture use in perpetuity on the ideas and advice of organic farmers, ecologists, planners, customers, and local residents, the prospective cluster of smallholdings has a binding whole site ecological management plan.

“Two things attracted us to the ELC”, says Ruth Wilson, of Steepholding, one of the smallholdings at the ELC’s first site, Greenham Reach. “One was the cost, which is based on the land price plus there was some infrastructure. The other really important one was the support for the planning side of things.

“Having two young children, setting up and doing this kind of thing, is quite hard work, and we wanted that element of risk – and potentially risk – taken out of it. Having met a lot of people getting into ecological agriculture and hearing their stories of having to go through planning appeals and seeing how much energy that had consumed was a major draw to us coming to the ELC to take that energy drain out of the equation.”

As a not-for-profit community benefit society the ELC largely relies on public financing to carry out their work. Members not only invest money, but are backing a values-led approach where the returns aren’t simply material and immediate but take a longer view longer such as the health of the land, the continuation of rural skills, rekindling local economies as well as the production of good, healthy food.

Their community share offer, in partnership with Ethex, experts in helping people make social investments, runs until 12th June (2017). Community Shares allow people to directly support enterprises that matter to them.

Inviting members of the public to invest, the ELC is looking to raise £340,000 for the creation of two new clusters of small farms. Investors are offered up to 3% interest on share capital annually. The minimum investment is £500 (in withdrawable shares) and anyone can invest.

The answer: small-scale ecological farming

Forward-thinking, stewardship-minded and ecologically based, small-scale farming injects creativity and care into agriculture. Small-scale farms make a distinctive contribution to rural life and economies. Providing local food, generating jobs (and income) such farmers are moving from being ‘price takers’ (as dictated by supermarkets) to ‘price makers’ (connecting with consumers).

Scaling back, not scaling up can provide a model for a truly ecological agriculture.

Studies have shown that the smaller the farm size the greater the yield per hectare. A 2014 UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report concludes that family farms produce over three-quarters of the world’s food. This is a direct challenge to the myth that Big Ag feeds the world.

Crop diversity, species rich polycultures and sound ecological land management means less use of chemicals, more care and more labour. And more labour translates as a higher quality of work inspired by an ecological ethic.

The industrial farming model has led to an ecological crisis in the UK. And we’ve a lot to answer for in our pursuit of more and more. Biodiversity loss, the degradation of soils, environmental contamination from agrochemicals, disease and antibiotic resistance, high greenhouse gas emissions, and huge amounts of food waste.

According to the UN 75% of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plants and five animal species. This narrowing and specialisation is prone to the shocks and challenges of a changing climate.

Despite this 84% of the world’s farms are less than two hectares. That’s a little over the size of two football pitches. For small-scale ecological agriculture biodiversity is the cornerstone of farm life.

Making the dream real in 21st century England

Such an approach can help create a more ecological healthy countryside which provides employment, produces good food and makes a positive contribution to wildlife and the natural world – the ultimate store of our natural capital which drives the planet.

And it’s increasingly taking root in the UK, drawing inspiration from the past while employing the latest ideas and techniques from organic, no-dig, permaculture and agroforestry methods.

The ELC seeks to create such ecologically based stewardship-minded farms to make small-scale agriculture a viable reality in 21st century England.

Phil Moore is one half of the communications team for the Ecological Land Co-operative. He is passionate about ‘enlightened agriculture’ – in the words of Colin Tudge – and works to promote it through documentary film and writing. He tweets at @ecolandcoop and @permapeople

More information

The Ecological Land Co-operative community share offer seeks to draw investment from the public for the creation of two new clusters of farms. Inviting members of the public to invest, the ELC is looking to raise £340,000 for the creation of two new clusters of small farms.

Latest News: The community share offer has just pushed over the £200K mark! With three weeks to go, our supporters have already raised £205,651 of investment. Amazing!

Investors are offered up to 3% interest on share capital annually. The minimum investment is £500 (in withdrawable shares) and anyone can invest. The share offer runs until 12th June 2017.

The Ecological Land Co-operative is a social enterprise helps new entrants into ecological agriculture in England supporting the growth of farming that works with the grain of nature.

In Thai and Lao languages, Mekong roughly translates as ‘mother of rivers.’ As one of the world’s largest waterways it stretches more than 4,000 kilometers thrusting through China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea.

For wildlife enthusiasts in the region, these are exciting times. A horned lizard and rainbow-headed snake were among 163 delightful new species documented last year by scientists alongside 10 endangered Irrawaddy dolphin calves. Fewer than 90 Irrawaddy dolphins exist on the planet.

But all is not well.

In January 2016, build on the 260-megawatt hydroelectric Don Sahong dam began less than a mile from Laos’ border with Cambodia. The area is home to a trans-boundary dolphin pool where numbers are critical. Just three remain. A figure the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warns is ‘no longer viable. (Functionally Extinct)

In recent months the dolphins have moved out of their two-kilometer preservation into areas where illegal fishing methods are rife. Villagers blame the daily boom of dynamite used to blast rocks in dam construction.

“Even when you are inside the water, it’s very loud,” says Mekong river ranger, Sok Laing, responsible for patrolling the dolphins’ protected area. “The noise is too loud and dolphins need to live in a place that is quiet,” he adds.

It’s a worry for villagers who rely on the thousands of tourists the dolphins bring yearly.

“Only local (protected) fishing is allowed in this part of the river but where the dolphins are now, no one is responsible for controlling,” says Bu Maen, a 27-year-old boat driver.

His village, Anlong Svay Thom, in Cambodia’s Stung Treng province, lies just south of the dam. It’s a smattering of wooden frame houses built on stilts in the Khmer fashion that overlook the river.

A new road was constructed to provide greater access to the secluded village. This boosted business for those driving tourists across the waters.

“Customers increased because of the road but now the dolphins have gone I don’t know what will happen,” Maen says.

Dolphin habitats threatened by human activity

Irrawaddy dolphins in Cambodia can be found in Stung Treng and Kratie, forming pools they generally live in for life.

These freshwater marine mammals are one of the oldest creatures in the world, long symbolizing the health of a river but forced now into near extinction by human activity.

Illegal fishermen are wise to the times when dynamite is used on the construction site say villagers. Some employ homemade bombs to blast fish; particularly in the new area the dolphins seek refuge.

“Poachers are very intelligent and very smart,” says Rin Narouen, conservation area manager at WWF Cambodia. “They use it on the same day so nobody can catch them.”

He believes if no action is taken, “they [dolphins] will become extinct.”

If such dire prognosis were to happen, “it means the income of people here will be affected,” says Laing. “Right now people come here because they want to see dolphins, if the dolphins are gone then no tourists will come again.”

Why governments are damming the Mekong

Around 120 million in Southeast Asia have no access to electricity. South East Asia Energy Outlook

In Cambodia this equates to 44 percent of its population according to Word Bank figures. Access To Energy

For governments that border the river, the cheaper and greener solution is to dam. In China for example, 88 percent of energy consumption uses fossil fuels. Fossil Fuel Energy Consumption

Large hydropower dams already exist on the Mekong in China, but more than 100 are planned by Mekong bordering countries. Of these, 11 will dam the river’s mainstream in Laos and Cambodia built by Thai, Malaysian, Chinese, and Vietnamese developers.

Laos, the poorest of its neighbors with a GDP of just $12.37 billion has declared its ambition to be ‘the battery of Southeast Asia.’ It will host nine of the dams for much needed revenue generation despite not benefitting from the electricity produced. For example, Don Sahong’s energy will be exported mainly to Thailand and Cambodia.

 Life in Preah Rumkel remains as it has for centuries

Fish is a staple sought from a river containing over 1,000 species of fish. The Mekong accounts for an astonishing one quarter of the world’s freshwater catch.  

Every morning, 29-year-old fisherman Horn Phoeun heads onto the Mekong.

“Before there was a lot of fish but now there are not many,” says Phoeun.  He has frequently changed the pools he fishes from in order to accommodate for the loss of catch. He blames illegal fishing and dams.

“It takes longer to catch the same amount of fish,” he says. Like many other villagers, he is considering switching to farming seeds and nuts. But it’s an expensive occupation costing $750 more to run and one riddled with risks of flooding.

“My father was a fisherman, my whole generation were fisherman,” he adds.

Upstream the Lower Sesan 2 dam is almost complete.

Some 34 miles east of the Don Sahong, fishermen and women gather on the muddy banks of the river’s Sesan channel with reams of mesh nets cascading around them.

Almost lost in the fabric of the net, they must decide whether any further attempts at fishing today will bring in a catch.

Here most come from Pluk Village in northern Cambodia, close to the $800m Lower Sesan 2 dam nearing completion on a Mekong tributary. It’s a venture between China’s Lancang Hydropower International Energy, Cambodia’s Royal Group, and Vietnam’s EVN International.

Utha Camy, a fisherman in his late 50s, stoops beside the nets. “Before the dams I would have caught more than 5 kilos by now,” says Camy. “And if I kept fishing from now until 6.30pm I would have caught a further 10 kilos.”

Today, after an unsettling 6am rise he has caught just one fish in five hours. The number of dams already built mean irregular variations in water levels that interfere with fish migration and spawning. There is no longer enough fish to go around.

“We all know this but right now there is no job for us to do, so we continue to just fish,” shrugs Camy.

A 2012 study by researchers from the U.S. and Cambodia estimated that the Sesan 2 dam once complete would reduce fish catch by 9 percent. Fish Biodiversity, Food Security & Hydropower in the Mekong River

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) oversees dam constructions on the lower Mekong through a 1995 agreement. It’s a committee of four member nations-Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. China is not part of the voluntary commission and it’s yet to resolve disagreements on projects.

And as the Ecologist has reported previously, many of the dams have gone ahead without backing from all member states. Death By Strangulation

So many dams are catastrophic for fisheries activists warn

According to conservationists, Cambodia’s 400-megawatt Sesan 2 dam will prevent sediment travel down to the Mekong’s delta, depriving it of nutrients needed for aquatic life and rice production.

A two and a half year study submitted by Vietnam to the MRC in 2016 concluded that there were “high to very high adverse effects on some of the key sectors and environmental resources in Cambodia and Vietnam,” as a result of planned dams.

Around 40 percent of Vietnam’s rice stock is grown in the delta. The country is still recovering from last year’s scathing El Nino induced drought – its worst in a century. [http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/vietnam-hit-by-worst/2562802.html].

“The further downstream a hydropower is sited, the more impact it will have on fisheries, notably on fish migration,” Marc Goichot, water lead at WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme said via email.

In the case of Don Sahong, for example the dam would block the only channel known as a year round route for migrating fish, vital to around 60 million people who rely on the protein the Mekong’s fish provide.

Mega First Corporation, the dam’s developers have in the past dismissed concerns, saying a new fish passage would be built.

“What the developers have done is widen some of the other surrounding channels and blast clear them out so that they are passable for fish migration as alternative routes,” says Maureen Harris, Southeast Asia program director at advocacy group International Rivers. “The problem is they’ve been doing this as they build the dam.”

Scientists believe there is lack of sufficient evidence that fish would migrate through new channels. The Myth of Sustainable Hydropower

“There are no example of success in large tropical rivers,” says Goichot.

In northern Cambodia villagers battle developers

Bai Pumsen, a 30-year-old rice farmer and his family of five were relocated six months ago to make way for the Sesan 2. His old home in Kbal Romeas will be flooded along with 5,000 others when the dam opens later this year.

Pumsen’s resettlement village currently called Kbal Romeas II is a regimented mix of yellow and blue concrete houses alongside traditional wooden builds.

Each family is entitled to either a house or $6,000 to build a new home as compensation and a 12-acre land to farm. New villages boast schools, health centers, and crucially electricity. However villagers complain the land isn’t ideal for farming, and is far from freshwater sources.

“Staying here is more difficult,” says Pumsen. “More than 50 families are waiting with no job to do.”

Land is yet to be cleared for agriculture.

Like Pumsen, many frequently make the two hour round trip back to their old rice fields for work and food and are demanding to move back.

“Here I have to spend a lot of money,” says 31-year-old mother of two, Sarun Nan. “Before there was no need to buy food, we just go down to the river and catch fish … now also for drinking and cooking I need to buy water.”

Nan and her husband commute by motorbike to their old village to fish and hunt in the forest. “I don’t know what I will do if I cannot continue to go,” she says.

There are some in Kbal Romeas who refuse to move to the resettlement site having seen how their former neighbours are struggling.

Dams are not the problem say experts but they need to be better planned

“It is easy to assess which ones will have the greatest negative impacts and the most positive. Common sense would be to prioritise the ones with least negative impacts, and postpone the ones with the greatest,” says Goichot. “Don Sahong, Lower Sesan, are in the 20 percent group with the highest negative impacts. They should not have been prioritised.”

Others point to more ecological means of energy generation through solar power. But these are difficult to attract financial investment and slow to generate immediate revenue.

“Typically what’s usually done in these projects is an economic impact assessment, where they weigh up the benefit but not the costs,” believes Mark Zeitoun, professor of water policy and security, at the University of East Anglia in England.

Zeitoun has been researching similar environmental issues on the $2.4 billion Merowe dam built on the River Nile in Northern Sudan. It’s displaced more than 50,000 people, blocking fish migration and degrading water quality. Impacts of Merowe Dam

In the US, older dams are being decommissioned. After its largest dam removal – the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon dam – salmon have returned to the Elwha river in Washington after almost a century of absence say scientists. River Restoration

But, “decommissioning is very expensive, much more expensive than building a dam,” adds Zeitoun. “Once you build a dam you are locked into it for a very long time.”

“The dams are affecting everyone who live along the river,” reflects Laing as he sits, legs crossed in front of his house looking ahead towards the calm waters. “We have to try to find a way to keep the fish and the dolphins within the Mekong. But how I don’t know.”

This author

Nosmot Gbadamosi is a freelance journalist based in London. She can be followed on Twitter @nosmotg

Nicolas Axelrod and Thomas Cristofoletti are co-founders of Ruom, a collective of journalists based in Asia. Read stories here [http://www.ruom.net/feature-stories/]

More information: Save the Mekong [https://savethemekong.org] campaign.

Also on The Ecologist: How the largest inland fisheries in the world are being destroyed. Destuction of the world’s largest inland fisheries

In Thai and Lao languages, Mekong roughly translates as ‘mother of rivers.’ As one of the world’s largest waterways it stretches more than 4,000 kilometers thrusting through China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea.

For wildlife enthusiasts in the region, these are exciting times. A horned lizard and rainbow-headed snake were among 163 delightful new species documented last year by scientists alongside 10 endangered Irrawaddy dolphin calves. Fewer than 90 Irrawaddy dolphins exist on the planet.

But all is not well.

In January 2016, build on the 260-megawatt hydroelectric Don Sahong dam began less than a mile from Laos’ border with Cambodia. The area is home to a trans-boundary dolphin pool where numbers are critical. Just three remain. A figure the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warns is ‘no longer viable. (Functionally Extinct)

In recent months the dolphins have moved out of their two-kilometer preservation into areas where illegal fishing methods are rife. Villagers blame the daily boom of dynamite used to blast rocks in dam construction.

“Even when you are inside the water, it’s very loud,” says Mekong river ranger, Sok Laing, responsible for patrolling the dolphins’ protected area. “The noise is too loud and dolphins need to live in a place that is quiet,” he adds.

It’s a worry for villagers who rely on the thousands of tourists the dolphins bring yearly.

“Only local (protected) fishing is allowed in this part of the river but where the dolphins are now, no one is responsible for controlling,” says Bu Maen, a 27-year-old boat driver.

His village, Anlong Svay Thom, in Cambodia’s Stung Treng province, lies just south of the dam. It’s a smattering of wooden frame houses built on stilts in the Khmer fashion that overlook the river.

A new road was constructed to provide greater access to the secluded village. This boosted business for those driving tourists across the waters.

“Customers increased because of the road but now the dolphins have gone I don’t know what will happen,” Maen says.

Dolphin habitats threatened by human activity

Irrawaddy dolphins in Cambodia can be found in Stung Treng and Kratie, forming pools they generally live in for life.

These freshwater marine mammals are one of the oldest creatures in the world, long symbolizing the health of a river but forced now into near extinction by human activity.

Illegal fishermen are wise to the times when dynamite is used on the construction site say villagers. Some employ homemade bombs to blast fish; particularly in the new area the dolphins seek refuge.

“Poachers are very intelligent and very smart,” says Rin Narouen, conservation area manager at WWF Cambodia. “They use it on the same day so nobody can catch them.”

He believes if no action is taken, “they [dolphins] will become extinct.”

If such dire prognosis were to happen, “it means the income of people here will be affected,” says Laing. “Right now people come here because they want to see dolphins, if the dolphins are gone then no tourists will come again.”

Why governments are damming the Mekong

Around 120 million in Southeast Asia have no access to electricity. South East Asia Energy Outlook

In Cambodia this equates to 44 percent of its population according to Word Bank figures. Access To Energy

For governments that border the river, the cheaper and greener solution is to dam. In China for example, 88 percent of energy consumption uses fossil fuels. Fossil Fuel Energy Consumption

Large hydropower dams already exist on the Mekong in China, but more than 100 are planned by Mekong bordering countries. Of these, 11 will dam the river’s mainstream in Laos and Cambodia built by Thai, Malaysian, Chinese, and Vietnamese developers.

Laos, the poorest of its neighbors with a GDP of just $12.37 billion has declared its ambition to be ‘the battery of Southeast Asia.’ It will host nine of the dams for much needed revenue generation despite not benefitting from the electricity produced. For example, Don Sahong’s energy will be exported mainly to Thailand and Cambodia.

 Life in Preah Rumkel remains as it has for centuries

Fish is a staple sought from a river containing over 1,000 species of fish. The Mekong accounts for an astonishing one quarter of the world’s freshwater catch.  

Every morning, 29-year-old fisherman Horn Phoeun heads onto the Mekong.

“Before there was a lot of fish but now there are not many,” says Phoeun.  He has frequently changed the pools he fishes from in order to accommodate for the loss of catch. He blames illegal fishing and dams.

“It takes longer to catch the same amount of fish,” he says. Like many other villagers, he is considering switching to farming seeds and nuts. But it’s an expensive occupation costing $750 more to run and one riddled with risks of flooding.

“My father was a fisherman, my whole generation were fisherman,” he adds.

Upstream the Lower Sesan 2 dam is almost complete.

Some 34 miles east of the Don Sahong, fishermen and women gather on the muddy banks of the river’s Sesan channel with reams of mesh nets cascading around them.

Almost lost in the fabric of the net, they must decide whether any further attempts at fishing today will bring in a catch.

Here most come from Pluk Village in northern Cambodia, close to the $800m Lower Sesan 2 dam nearing completion on a Mekong tributary. It’s a venture between China’s Lancang Hydropower International Energy, Cambodia’s Royal Group, and Vietnam’s EVN International.

Utha Camy, a fisherman in his late 50s, stoops beside the nets. “Before the dams I would have caught more than 5 kilos by now,” says Camy. “And if I kept fishing from now until 6.30pm I would have caught a further 10 kilos.”

Today, after an unsettling 6am rise he has caught just one fish in five hours. The number of dams already built mean irregular variations in water levels that interfere with fish migration and spawning. There is no longer enough fish to go around.

“We all know this but right now there is no job for us to do, so we continue to just fish,” shrugs Camy.

A 2012 study by researchers from the U.S. and Cambodia estimated that the Sesan 2 dam once complete would reduce fish catch by 9 percent. Fish Biodiversity, Food Security & Hydropower in the Mekong River

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) oversees dam constructions on the lower Mekong through a 1995 agreement. It’s a committee of four member nations-Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. China is not part of the voluntary commission and it’s yet to resolve disagreements on projects.

And as the Ecologist has reported previously, many of the dams have gone ahead without backing from all member states. Death By Strangulation

So many dams are catastrophic for fisheries activists warn

According to conservationists, Cambodia’s 400-megawatt Sesan 2 dam will prevent sediment travel down to the Mekong’s delta, depriving it of nutrients needed for aquatic life and rice production.

A two and a half year study submitted by Vietnam to the MRC in 2016 concluded that there were “high to very high adverse effects on some of the key sectors and environmental resources in Cambodia and Vietnam,” as a result of planned dams.

Around 40 percent of Vietnam’s rice stock is grown in the delta. The country is still recovering from last year’s scathing El Nino induced drought – its worst in a century. [http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/vietnam-hit-by-worst/2562802.html].

“The further downstream a hydropower is sited, the more impact it will have on fisheries, notably on fish migration,” Marc Goichot, water lead at WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme said via email.

In the case of Don Sahong, for example the dam would block the only channel known as a year round route for migrating fish, vital to around 60 million people who rely on the protein the Mekong’s fish provide.

Mega First Corporation, the dam’s developers have in the past dismissed concerns, saying a new fish passage would be built.

“What the developers have done is widen some of the other surrounding channels and blast clear them out so that they are passable for fish migration as alternative routes,” says Maureen Harris, Southeast Asia program director at advocacy group International Rivers. “The problem is they’ve been doing this as they build the dam.”

Scientists believe there is lack of sufficient evidence that fish would migrate through new channels. The Myth of Sustainable Hydropower

“There are no example of success in large tropical rivers,” says Goichot.

In northern Cambodia villagers battle developers

Bai Pumsen, a 30-year-old rice farmer and his family of five were relocated six months ago to make way for the Sesan 2. His old home in Kbal Romeas will be flooded along with 5,000 others when the dam opens later this year.

Pumsen’s resettlement village currently called Kbal Romeas II is a regimented mix of yellow and blue concrete houses alongside traditional wooden builds.

Each family is entitled to either a house or $6,000 to build a new home as compensation and a 12-acre land to farm. New villages boast schools, health centers, and crucially electricity. However villagers complain the land isn’t ideal for farming, and is far from freshwater sources.

“Staying here is more difficult,” says Pumsen. “More than 50 families are waiting with no job to do.”

Land is yet to be cleared for agriculture.

Like Pumsen, many frequently make the two hour round trip back to their old rice fields for work and food and are demanding to move back.

“Here I have to spend a lot of money,” says 31-year-old mother of two, Sarun Nan. “Before there was no need to buy food, we just go down to the river and catch fish … now also for drinking and cooking I need to buy water.”

Nan and her husband commute by motorbike to their old village to fish and hunt in the forest. “I don’t know what I will do if I cannot continue to go,” she says.

There are some in Kbal Romeas who refuse to move to the resettlement site having seen how their former neighbours are struggling.

Dams are not the problem say experts but they need to be better planned

“It is easy to assess which ones will have the greatest negative impacts and the most positive. Common sense would be to prioritise the ones with least negative impacts, and postpone the ones with the greatest,” says Goichot. “Don Sahong, Lower Sesan, are in the 20 percent group with the highest negative impacts. They should not have been prioritised.”

Others point to more ecological means of energy generation through solar power. But these are difficult to attract financial investment and slow to generate immediate revenue.

“Typically what’s usually done in these projects is an economic impact assessment, where they weigh up the benefit but not the costs,” believes Mark Zeitoun, professor of water policy and security, at the University of East Anglia in England.

Zeitoun has been researching similar environmental issues on the $2.4 billion Merowe dam built on the River Nile in Northern Sudan. It’s displaced more than 50,000 people, blocking fish migration and degrading water quality. Impacts of Merowe Dam

In the US, older dams are being decommissioned. After its largest dam removal – the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon dam – salmon have returned to the Elwha river in Washington after almost a century of absence say scientists. River Restoration

But, “decommissioning is very expensive, much more expensive than building a dam,” adds Zeitoun. “Once you build a dam you are locked into it for a very long time.”

“The dams are affecting everyone who live along the river,” reflects Laing as he sits, legs crossed in front of his house looking ahead towards the calm waters. “We have to try to find a way to keep the fish and the dolphins within the Mekong. But how I don’t know.”

This author

Nosmot Gbadamosi is a freelance journalist based in London. She can be followed on Twitter @nosmotg

Nicolas Axelrod and Thomas Cristofoletti are co-founders of Ruom, a collective of journalists based in Asia. Read stories here [http://www.ruom.net/feature-stories/]

More information: Save the Mekong [https://savethemekong.org] campaign.

Also on The Ecologist: How the largest inland fisheries in the world are being destroyed. Destuction of the world’s largest inland fisheries

All of a sudden the UK’s political parties want to have nothing to do with nuclear power.

This much is clear from the party manifestos – notably that of the Conservative Party, published yesterday.

OK, it does not announce an end to Britain’s massive 10GW nuclear power programme set out in the Cameron-Osborne years of government.

In fact, it does not even mention nuclear power. Instead it states that a future Tory government will remain sublimely indifferent to how our electricity is generated, so long as it’s reliable, cheap and low carbon:

“Above all, we believe that energy policy should be focused on outcomes rather than the means by which we reach our objectives. So, after we have left the European Union, we will form our energy policy based not on the way energy is generated but on the ends we desire – reliable and affordable energy, seizing the industrial opportunity that new technology presents and meeting our global commitments on climate change.”

Just compare that to the July 2015 statement of then energy secretary Amber Rudd to the House of Commons energy select committee, seeking to justify the astonishing cost of the Hinkley C nuclear power station to energy users, that: “We have to have secure base-load, so you should not be surprised that we are prepared to pay more for that in order to ensure nuclear is part of the mix. The requirement for nuclear is absolute.”

Or here’s the line from the 2015 manifesto, when nuclear power was, apparently, something to be proud of and trumpeted: “All parts of the UK will soon be helping to deliver secure, affordable and low-carbon energy, from the Hinkley Point nuclear power station … significant expansion in new nuclear and gas … signing a deal to build the first new nuclear plant in a generation …”

Because now, it’s all about keeping costs down, says the 2017 manifesto: “We want to make sure that the cost of energy in Britain is internationally competitive, both for businesses and households … Our ambition is that the UK should have the lowest energy costs in Europe, both for households and businesses. So as we upgrade our energy infrastructure, we will do it in an affordable way, consistent with that ambition.”

And one sure way not to deliver cheap energy to the UK is to build new nuclear power stations. if Hinkley C is ever built, UK energy users will be paying more than double the current wholesale power price, inflation adjusted, for 35 years from the time it opens, something that could cost the UK economy £50-100 billion.

Labour and the Libdems: a pocketful of mumbles

By contrast, Labour does give nuclear power a specific mention it is manifesto – just a rather small one that adds up to no real commitment to anything.

“The UK has the world’s oldest nuclear industry, and nuclear will continue to be part of the UK energy supply. We will support further nuclear projects and protect nuclear workers’ jobs and pensions. There are considerable opportunities for nuclear power and decommissioning both internationally and domestically.”

Let’s decipher. Yes, nuclear power will continue to be part of energy supply as we still have quite a few old nuclear power stations that we are not about to shut down.

What about “We will support further nuclear projects”? What kind of nuclear projects? How about decommissioning, nuclear waste management, production of medical isotopes … ? Do these projects include nuclear power? They’re not telling. Most likely (after all we know that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is firmly anti-nuclear) these are warm but empty words to placate powerful nuclear-supporting trades unions like the GMB and Unite.

And what kind of ‘support’? Speeches in the House of Commons? Or tens of billions of pounds of hard cash. It’s hard to say. Does this add up to a firm commitment to build a fleet of new nuclear power stations at massive public cost? Hardly.

The Libdem position is similarly weak, promising only that “We will … Accept that new nuclear power stations can play a role in electricity supply provided concerns about safety, disposal of waste and cost are adequately addressed, new technology is incorporated, and there is no public subsidy for new build.”

We know perfectly well that nuclear power is hugely expensive, intrinsically unsafe due to its potential for massive harm (look only to Fukushima), can only operate with enormous public subsidies, and that no one has yet figured out a way to keep nuclear wastes safely contained for tens of thousands of years, an informed interpretation of this statement might go: “Nuclear power? Not on your nelly!”

As for the Greens, they have yet to publish their manifesto but there can be no doubt that their long term opposition to nuclear power will hold.

UKIP has not yet published a manifesto, but in 2015 said it supported “a diverse energy market based on coal, nuclear, shale gas, conventional gas, oil, solar and hydro, as well as other renewables where these can be delivered at competitive prices.” Which if course nuclear cannot.

Meanwhile the SNP says it wants no new nuclear power stations in Scotland; and Plaid Cymu leader Leanne Wood is opposed to new nuclear power, but her executive supports Wylfa because of the jobs. Got that?

Why the turnaround?

It has surely become clear to politicians that nuclear power is in a death spiral, terminally afflicted by:

• very high costs, at least double those of conventional generation, which can only be carried by governments, taxpayers and energy users at the expense of more deserving and productive investments;

• apparently unconstructable reactor designs hit by massive cost overruns and delays in France, Finland and the USA;

• the bankruptcy of the world’s biggest nuclear power contractor, the Toshiba-owned Westinghouse – lined up to build a massive new nuclear complex at Moorside in Cumbria with three AP1000 reactors – mainly as a result of these cost overruns and delays on AP1000 projects in the USA;

• the parlous condition of the French parastatals EDF and Areva, which survive only thanks to the inexhaustible largesse of French taxpayers;

• investor reluctance to have anything to do with new nuclear power stations unless returns are guaranteed in cast iron contracts at huge expense to taxpayers;

• the continuing lack of a long term solution for nuclear waste storage / disposal;

• the inflexibility of nuclear power stations, which means that they overproduce when electricity is in surplus, while being unable to keep up with demand when power is desperately needed;

• the continuing precipitous decline in the cost of disruptive ‘new energy’ technologies such as solar, wind, including offshore wind, grid-scale batteries, power to gas, smart grid, set to continue and gather pace for many years to come.

So what’s the alternative? Given that onshore wind is already the cheapest new source of power generation, and offshore wind costs are falling rapidly (and are already far cheaper than new nuclear), wind power really should have a big role. So check out this statement from the Conservative manifesto:

“While we do not believe that more large-scale onshore wind power is right for England, we will maintain our position as a global leader in offshore wind and support the development of wind projects in the remote islands of Scotland, where they will directly benefit local communities.”

This commits a future Tory government to maintaining a strong pipeline of large offshore wind projects, while opening the door to medium and small scale onshore wind power in England, as well as to large scale wind on Scottish islands and elsewhere in the devolved nations. What it ultimately means is that wind power has a great future in the UK – in stark contrast to previous policy.

Just in case I’m sounding all enthusiastic about the Conservative manifesto, don’t get me wrong. It is the worst on environment, energy and climate of the three main parties, and contains big breaks for fossil fuels including fracking. It’s just a great deal better than we might have guessed a week ago.

And on nuclear power, they (notably the intelligent and pragmatic BEIS secretary Greg Clark) have clearly seen sense.

Libdems set the pace on green energy

And if in some dramatic switch of fortunes Labour wins the election, its manifesto also signals a big switch to renewables:

“To ensure: security of energy supply and ‘keep the lights on’; energy costs are affordable for consumers and businesses; we meet our climate change targets and transition to a low-carbon economy … We are committed to renewable energy projects, including tidal lagoons, which can help create manufacturing and energy jobs as well as contributing to climate change commitments.”

But best of all on renewables are the Libdems, who promise (inter alia) to (direct quotes):

• Expand renewable energy, aiming to generate 60% of electricity from renewables by 2030, restoring government support for solar PV and onshore wind in appropriate locations (helping meet climate targets at least cost) and building more electricity interconnectors to underpin this higher reliance on renewables.

• Support investment in cutting-edge technologies including energy storage, smart grid technology, hydrogen technologies, offshore wind, and tidal power (including giving the go-ahead for the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon), and investing heavily in research and development.

• Pass a Zero-Carbon Britain Act to set new legally binding targets to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2040 and to zero by 2050.

• Set up a British Housing and Infrastructure Development Bank to mobilise investment into the low-carbon and sustainable infrastructure the UK needs to remain competitive.

Hinkley C – dead in the water?

There’s just one awkward remaining question: what of the Hinkley C nuclear power station in Somerset, given that contracts between the UK government and EDF to build the twin-unit EPR have already been signed.

Given: complications with Brexit; the specialist, skilled, experienced immigrant labour that would needed for EPR construction; the UK’s departure from the Euratom treaty; the decline in the value of EDF’s revenues with the weaker pound; continuing challenges with the Flamanville reactor and elsewhere with the EPR reactor design; and EDF’s crippling and under-budgetted financial obligations to decommission its nuclear power stations in France … it may well never happen.

Another factor is the new President Macron, who might reasonably prefer that EDF conserve its dwindling resources rather than blow them on a potentially ruinous nuclear project in the UK.

This line of thinking was confirmed this week by his appointment of prominent green activist Nicolas Hulot as the minister in charge of environment and energy – the same Hulot who last month told Liberation newspaper that “While elsewhere the energy transition accelerates, EDF gets closer to Areva, overinvests in costly nuclear projects like Hinkley Point, and does not invest enough in renewables.”

As Reuters reported, “investors expected a pro-nuclear energy policy from the new government. But the appointment of Hulot – France’s best-known environmental campaigner and a former television documentary maker – as ecology minister raised doubts in investors’ minds about the strength of that commitment.”

Not with a bang, nor even a whimper

It now looks increasingly as if the Hinkley C project may be quietly shelved, or even cancelled, with the agreement of both UK and French governments.

And beyond that the prospects for new nuclear power in the UK have never been gloomier. The only way new nuclear power stations will ever be built in the UK is with massive political and financial commitment from government. That commitment is clearly absent.

So yes, this finally looks like the end of the UK’s ‘nuclear renaissance’. Not with a bang, nor even with a whimper, but with a deep and profoundly meaningful silence. Not a moment too soon.

Oliver Tickell is contributing editor at The Ecologist.

Dr Ian Fairlie is an independent consultant on environmental radioactivity. He formerly was a senior scientist in the Civil Service and worked for the TUC as a researcher between 1975 and 1990.

Britain is facing a housing crisis that has led to a rise of both people sleeping on the streets and vulnerable families left on waiting lists for social housing to be available. Since the Recession, house prices in some regions have now recovered and, despite the speculation and uncertainty of Brexit negotiations, are on the rise along with rent.

Add into the mix of rising house prices and rents, an increase in the cost of building materials and other new build costs since 2010, plus a rise in the cost of utility bills, and it’s no wonder so many people are seeking alternative housing.

A Scottish recycling expert has built an eco home using resources that cost nothing and would have ended up in a landfill or in an incinerator. He has not stepped foot into a builder’s merchant for materials. Designed and built in the style of a traditional Scottish cabin, it has both running water and electricity without any utility bills. It has been zero-rated by the local council and so he does not pay any council tax.

Angus Carnie (55) built his eco cabin in his native Carnoustie, Dundee, using materials that were free and can live there for free.

While the interior is pleasantly decorated, the real interest is in the walls. Primarily using waste polymers, the walls are made up of ‘logs’ of shredded plastics that have been compressed together. The foundations are built with old plastic hospital bed sheets, which Angus converted into solid blocks. The cabin is insulated with photocopier toner cartridges, a plastic which is currently unrecyclable, shredded into a fine fibre after he’s used the ink to paint the cabin.

Interestingly enough, Carnie has created a type of plasterboard out of waste plastic, which is lighter, waterproof and is significantly more durable than conventional  plasterboards.

“The whole theme of the house is that I wanted it to be that it used to be something else,” He said as he showed me the floorboards that were from an old church originally and is now part of his kitchen.

“From a material point of view, what I was particularly keen to use was materials that were either going to end up in a landfill or have to be disposed of in an expensive manner.”

Carnie hopes that the thinking and ideas that went into his cabin can be used to help with social housing and combat homelessness in Britain.

The cabin cost only £40,000 to build – £25,000 paid for the land to build on and Angus spent another £15,000 on processing plastic and on the services of an electrician. He did not spend a penny for the raw materials for his one-bedroom property. And what his project has shown is that if a commercial company was to take up his idea and begin producing building materials or entire homes using waste plastic, the overall cost could be significantly cheaper and turnover significantly faster.

“Basically, what I wanted to achieve was to create a social home, because it’s very difficult now in certain parts of the country to get on the housing ladder,” He said. “I felt that, with skillsets that I have of being able to work out what to do with different waste streams, I could, rather than look at individual products, I could build a whole house.”

The use of waste plastic is an interesting choice as it is a seemingly endless resource. It is a potential building material that people and businesses pay to have taken away. Something Carnie hopes the construction industry will embrace more.

Another appealing aspect of his eco cabin is that it is incredibly cheap to live in. The one bedroom property collects rainwater and uses both solar and wind power to provide electricity.

“The Council tax people have visited and zero rated the property because I have no gas, no electricity bills, and no water bills, because the water comes, effectively, from rain.” He says. “They were very impressed.”

“I wanted it to be a very, very cheap house to run, because I think where quite a lot of poverty starts is that houses are badly insulated and they’re expensive to run for heating and lighting. I wanted to erode that cost. One part of that is insulation, and the other aspect was to create your own electricity.”

The rise of utility bills across the big six providers is certainly going to put the squeeze on vulnerable households and making Carnie’s sustainable cabin prototype an attractive idea.

Much like the Oxfam’s ‘Give a man a Fish,’ campaign, this could be an opportunity to provide support to people without continuingly subsidising their utility bills through fuel grants and schemes. Not that I have anything against schemes such as Winter Fuel Payment but this could be a sustainable solution. By providing the right tools and resources, it could mean people stay out of debt and off the street.

While Carnie’s ideas are fascinating and present a range of opportunities, he is not the first to turn to sustainability as a solution to affordable housing.

Oscar Mendez, a Colombian Architect, has been recycling plastics into building blocks and creating shelters for families displaced by violence and housing in Bogota. He has formed a company that specialises in producing these building blocks for construction and has attracted significant funding. Though his venture is still in its infancy, creating a handful of properties, the potential has been recognised and the homes he is producing are cheaper to build compared to traditional housing in Colombia.

In the UK, a hospital in Newport, Wales is trialling the use of a machine by TCG which recycles their used plastic hospital bed sheets into sterile blocks. Since beginning this trial, the prototype machine has saved the hospital £864 per month by reducing waste to a landfill. The sales of these blocks have made this machine financially viable. There is further potential in the near future with the blocks being used as 3D printing filament or used to generate electricity in a biomass plant. The earning potential of a scheme like this could benefit a number of hospitals and trusts.

Last year was also a good year for renewable energy. There had only been a small increase in renewable capacity to 33.4 GW (0.7% or 0.2 GW) in 2016. However, 5.8 GW of capacity that was installed qualified for the GB Fit in Tariff Scheme (FiT). This means there’s been a 30% increase of people potentially generating revenue off their renewable energy plant and reducing their own utility bills.

While these are positive examples, this is just a drop of water in an ocean. With over 1.6 million people on waiting lists for social homes in England, for these ideas to greatly impact social housing and homelessness in the UK, we need a large shift in thinking and how we view waste.

Theresa May today launched the Conservative party manifesto, eager to differentiate her party from the Liberal Democrats that are making a land-grab for the anti-Brexit centre, and a Labour party swinging leftwards and away (or possibly slightly towards) Europe.

But among the Conservatives’ vague anti-immigration promises and plans to tie social care to the value of an individual’s estate was a stark fact – the Tories are now the only major party in the UK that does not oppose fracking.

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats promised to ban or oppose the practice in this general election campaign.

Labour’s manifesto promised an outright ban, and said the party was against fracking because “it would lock us into an energy infrastructure based on fossil fuels, long after the point in 2030 when the Committee on Climate Change says gas in the UK must sharply decline.”

The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto said the party opposes fracking “because of its adverse impact on climate change, the energy mix, and the local environment.”

Defiant Tories hold to the fracking faith

But the Conservatives maintained that there is a role for the fledgling industry. The manifesto said: “The discovery of shale gas in the United States has been a revolution.”

“We will therefore develop the shale industry in Britain. We will only be able to do so if we maintain public confidence in the process, if we uphold our rigorous environmental protections, and if we ensure the proceeds of the wealth generated by shale energy are shared with the communities affected.”

It is a stark departure from the last general election, just over two years ago, when all three parties supported fracking so long as it was sufficiently regulated. During that election only the Green party promised an outright ban, as it has done so again this time round.

The Tories also reiterated their commitment to maximising recovery of North Sea oil and gas reserves, as well as making the UK a leader in decommissioning services once the wells are spent. The manifesto said:

“We will continue to support the industry and build on the unprecedented support already provided to the oil and gas sector. While there are very significant reserves still in the North Sea, it is expected to be the first major oil and gas basin in the world to decommission fully, and we will take advantage of that to support the development of a world-leading decommissioning industry.”

And to expedite the fracking revolution, the Conservative manifesto promises a new special purpose regulator for the industry, and a ‘Shale Wealth Fund’ to benefit ‘host’ communities:

“We will set up a new Shale Environmental Regulator, which will assume the relevant functions of the Health and Safety Executive, the Environment Agency and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. This will provide clear governance and accountability, become a source of expertise, and allow decisions to be made fairly but swiftly.

“Finally, we will change the proposed Shale Wealth Fund so a greater percentage of the tax revenues from shale gas directly benefit the communities that host the extraction sites. Where communities decide that it is right for them, we will allow payments to be made directly to local people themselves. A significant share of the remaining tax revenues will be invested for the benefit of the country at large.”

Climate change promises

Like Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative manifesto also pledged to continue to take action on climate change.

Labour’s manifesto promised to put the UK “back on track” to meeting its climate goals. It listed climate change among other major challenges any government must address such as global terrorism and the threat of nuclear war.

The Liberal Democrats likewise said the government has “a duty to future generations to protect our environment and tackle climate change”. It promised to fight a hard Brexit, and maintain the EU’s “high standards” when it came to regulations that aim to tackle climate change.

The Conservatives pointed to the Climate Change Act and the ratification of the Paris Agreement on their watch as proof of their commitment. The manifesto states:

“The United Kingdom will lead the world in environmental protection. As Conservatives, we are committed to leaving the environment in better condition than we inherited it. That is why we will continue to take a lead in global action against climate change, as the government demonstrated by ratifying the Paris Agreement. We were the first country to introduce a Climate Change Act, which Conservatives helped to frame, and we are halfway towards meeting our 2050 goal of reducing emissions by eighty per cent from 1990 levels.”

At the opposite end of this spectrum, as usual, is UKIP. The party also launched its energy manifesto today (though it does not appear on UKIP’s website), and offered a promise to repeal the Climate Change Act, and cut support for wind and solar energy:

Mat Hope is Deputy Editor at DeSmog.uk. He tweets at @matjhope.

This article was originally published here on DeSmog.uk. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.

We all have to consume; it’s a necessary reality of existence. However, in the ‘consumer society’ the most radical thing you can do is not to consume ‘as directed’ – by finding alternative options that meets your needs while enacting a set of principles in opposition to that overbearing and exploitative economic paradigm.

This principle was self-evident during one of Britain’s darkest consumer crises of late … the hummus shortage.

Honestly, I had to do a double-take. Given how simple it is to make hummus (see recipe below) how on earth could people get so worked up over a shortage of what, I believe, it a pretty sub-standard consumer product anyway.

That, in reality, is the whole point of ‘The Consumer Society‘.

By externalizing the creation of a product, the consumer cedes both economic and creative power to those who would control the market for their own gain.

Modern economics is based on ‘dependency’

The Harried Leisure Class, by Columbia / Yale University social-economist Steffan Linder, outlined the greatest challenge in modern economics – making people’s ‘spare’ time economically rewarding to business.

Writing in 1970, when people were told that new technology would create a life of ever-increasing leisure (have you heard that again recently too?), Linder’s book examined the contradiction between making people consume when they may not be working as much, and therefore not earning as much money to buy goods.

Creating a dependency on products is a necessary step to make consumption continue. Dependency provides the self-justification for the inevitable over-extension of personal effort, and finance, that continued consumption requires. On food, he outlined the state which existed in the USA in the late 1960s:

“We have no time to cook food. Actual cooking is a time-consuming process, and has been abandoned in favour of thawing and heating, which is not an unqualified advance. We have made the transition from appetizing food to acceptable nutrition.”

Does that sound familiar? Contemporary trends are not new, they just apply to far more people across the planet than they used to.

The ‘cult’ of consumption

The era that Linder described was engineered, deliberately, a decade earlier during the 1950s. Following in the wake of the Washington Consensus, creating economic dependency was a deliberate act by those seeking to create what we now call ‘corporate power’.

One of the most revealing reflections on this process was by written Victor Lebow, published in the Journal of Retailing in Spring 1955:

“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption.”

“Rituals”? “Spiritual satisfaction”?

What he’s describing here are the roots of the modern practice of branding, perceived obsolescence, and the warped identity politics which flow from that – transforming shopping into a quasi-religious frenzy.

The apotheosis of Lebow’s idea is embodied in today’s ironic acceptance of our dependency on consumption, whilst at the same time our seeming inability to change that situation.

Curiously, coming right up-to-date, Chuck Palahniuk’s phrase that, “things you used to own, now they own you”, is now set to become reality with the development of the ‘Internet of Things‘.

Hence why non-participation is revolutionary

Which brings me back to the hummus crisis …

The myth at the heart of consumerism is that it is economically and qualitatively better to buy a new product than to repair something, or to create it yourself.

While for most people that might be true for the most complex goods, such as a computer, that’s not true of hummus – and many other things which make up large parts of our everyday life. Food is at the top of that list of ‘easily do-able’ things – not just preparing it, but growing it too.

Gandhi, reflecting the ideas of ‘modern’ simplicity and frugality he took from Thoreau and Tolstoy, entreated us to “be the change you want to see in the world.”

In fact, as Thoreau and Tolstoy outline, to make change in ourselves we need to go further than simply ‘being’, and transition into ‘doing’, by working outside of domineering economic structures.

Most importantly, you should find ways to take enjoyment from that proces – hijacking the momentary reciprocity embodied in acts of consumption by taking pleasure in your own daily acts of creation.

‘Active’ rather than ‘passive’ mindfulness

One recent movement attempting to find solace in this sea of stress is ‘mindfulness’ – the idea that you should be aware of and live within the experience of the moment.

Mindfulness is often portrayed as a passive, meditative act. But in my experience repetitive or ordered acts like cooking food are quintessentially meditative. More than that, the act of creation is a literal expression of our self-awareness … “I do, therefore I am!”

The case of food is also deeply symbolic.

It embodies a long human tradition surrounding the concept of sustenance, and of connection to those who will partake of the food. This is why food preparation was historically viewed as a quasi-spiritual ‘prayer’, or act of devotion, often surrounded by ritual.

Every act of creating food from raw, natural ingredients – in contrast to Linder’s “thawing and heating” – is a spiritual process beyond that which ordinary consumerism can achieve. That is why the modern pressures of life, by denying us that meditative ‘recreation’, demeans our human capacities.

‘Involuntary simplicity’

Another popular movement is ‘voluntary simplicity‘ – attempting to respond to the crisis of consumption by consuming less. That’s ultimately my own response.

Lately though, given current economic realities, I’ve started to talk about ‘involuntary simplicity’. To express it in ecological terms, the current trend of rising inequality, and economic austerity, is ‘forcing’ simpler, less-intense patterns of consumption on the major part of the population.

People are protesting to reverse austerity. Likewise, the recent votes for Trump or Brexit can be seen as a protectionist call to preserve the heydays of the consuming lifestyle engineered in the 1950s.

Is this valid in ecological terms – given the pressing ecological limits to consumption? Or is it simply an expression of the material dependency of the addicted consumer? In my view, we need to embrace the ecological dimension that austerity creates; a ‘societal detox’ from the addictive lifestyles created by consumerism.

For what is economic austerity in the developed world if not an unplanned and chaotic form of the ‘contraction and convergence’ process – which many talked of in the 1990s as a solution to many of the world’s ecological ills?

If we could provide an ‘ecologically civilized’ alternative to economic austerity then we’d be addressing many of the globe’s current environmental and social ills.

Making hummus is a symbolic act towards a greater change

I love making food. It’s deep; primal. It speaks not only to my own need for simple, non-processed food, but also to my need to create. Bread, pies, cakes, nut burgers, soya milk and more besides.

The point here is not simply to make hummus. The point – in consciously reversing the process described by Linder or Lebow – is that by extricating ourselves from our economic dependency we simultaneously develop the skills of resiliency.

The act of being involved in preparing your food can, if you live that as a personally creative process, become a profound and basic statement of your greater world view.

How far you go down that route is up to you. Even if we don’t do it all the time, by developing these skills we learn the capacity to ‘do without’ and create our own alternatives. And as mainstream economics fails, enforcing ‘involuntary’ simplicity’ in an desperate act of self-preservation, such skills can be a vital survival tool for us all.

Recipe: ‘Own-made super-strength hummus’

This is my recipe to make five kilos of hummus. I make a five kilo batches and freezing them in small containers as it is far more efficient in terms of time and resource consumption.

You can scale the figures for whatever quantity you require (e.g. to make 1 kilo, divide everything by 5). Note also that this recipe does not use ‘power tools’.

In my view the physical exercise, the smells and textures of the process are an important part of the ‘producer’, as opposed to ‘consumer’, experience.

If you want to make hummus like that in the shops you will need to add another litre or so of water, and use an electric liquidizer to get the same texture. Likewise, use about a quarter of the garlic and about half the amount of tahini – although that will significantly reduce the nutritional quality.

Recipe (main ingredients in bold)

1. Take around 1.25 kilos of dried chickpeas and soak them for 12 to 15 hours (unless you can grow them, dried pulses are less impacting on the environment than canned). Add 10 grams/1 tablespoon of coarse salt, dissolved in water, and then add more water to cover the chickpeas with at least 50% of their depth in the container. This is because the chickpeas will swell, almost doubling in size, and doubling in weight – to roughly 2.4 kilos.

2. Drain and refill the water in the pan. Make sure the swelled chickpeas are well covered in water, add another 10 grams of salt, bring to the boil and then simmer until soft enough to mash. This might take 1½ to 2 hours in an ordinary large saucepan. It is more efficient to use a pressure cooker. At 12 pounds pressure they cook in about half the time (roughly 1 hour) using about the same amount of heat – hence why pressure cookers are more energy efficient.

If you can chop garlic and squash the lemons quickly enough you can do the next two steps while the chickpeas boil – otherwise you’ll need to prepare them before.

1. Peel, squash and chop around 6 large bulbs/400 to 450 grams of fresh garlic. It’s important to crush the garlic first before chopping in order to extract as much of the oil as possible.

2. Squash and sieve the pips from 10 to 12 lemons to produce around half a litre of lemon juice.

3. When the chickpeas have boiled drain the water – then rinse with cold water and drain again. This is important not only because it stops you scaling yourself on boiling hot chickpeas, it also stops the heat driving off the nutritious essential oils from the crushed garlic and lemon juice. Then roughly mash the chickpeas, not to purée them, to ensure most of them have burst.

4. Add the garlic, lemon juice, and 150 millilitres of olive oil – then give everything a good mashing to mix everything together.

5. Add 1 kilo of tahini. This takes some effort as the oily tahini doesn’t mix easily, but this can be helped by slowing adding around half a litre of warm water at this point. Add more to create the consistency of hummus you desire. Keep mashing until you reach either the ‘crunchy’ (with lumps) or ‘smooth’ texture you want.

6. Spoon the hummus into small containers. To keep for more than a week or so you’ll need to freeze them. Allow the containers to air-cool until they reach room temperature before putting them in the fridge; then allow them to cool for a few hours/overnight in the fridge before putting them in the freezer. This avoids using excess ‘mechanical’ energy to cool the hummus.

7. Last, and most importantly, eat the hummus. To defrost a container just take out out of the freezer and leave for a couple of hours before returning it to the fridge. Note, if you follow my ‘super strength’ recipe, while all those garlic oils might make you very healthy you might also find that you’re eating alone☺

Buying the ingredients from superstores the cost is around £3.60/kilo – in contrast to the roughly £5/kilo from shop-bought hummus. However, due to the much higher quantities of garlic and tahini, this recipe creates a qualitatively richer, tastier and more nutritious product.

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental researcher and freelance author. He is also the creator of the Free Range Activism Website, FRAW

A fully referenced version of this article is available on FRAW.

The video accompanying this article, entitled ‘Hummus and Mindfulness’, can also be found on the ‘ramblinactivist’ YouTube channel.

DRAWN TO THE FROZEN SOUTH

57˚13.10’S

As I sketch on the deck of the ship, I am struggling to stand upright. 300 miles from land, the rough dark blue seas of the two-mile-deep Drake Passage are rising and sinking to their notoriety. The strong wind is cold and after two days of seeing a horizon interrupted only by oversized breaking waves, it feels like we are on our own. But we’re not. The biggest bird in the world is effortlessly following our ship. The unflappable Albatross rarely beats its enormous but elegant wings, making our progress to the Antarctic seem laboured and cumbersome.

This lone, feathered gatekeeper seems to be welcoming our vessel to a special place. We have just crossed the Antarctic Convergence, an invisible border that marks the undersea battle of the relatively warm Atlantic waters with the near-freezing Southern Ocean. The temperature has quickly plummeted as we pierce the cold air bubble that surrounds, and protects, the Antarctic continent.

Unaffected by the cold or the gale, the graceful juvenile Wandering Albatross is inquisitively tracking our progress. Its 10ft wingspan is the longest in the world yet, as our ship climbs the 25ft swell, the bird skims the surface by inches using its knowledge of the rhythm of the surging white crests to avoid touching the sea. Its amazing ability to survive in this isolated, unforgiving and yet vulnerable environment is remarkable.

Vulnerability is a constant theme of my paintings, many of which feature the sadly shrinking Arctic icecap, so this chance to see its bigger more solid twin at the other end of the world is too good an opportunity to miss. I’ve suppressed my guilt of a rarely-taken flight to get to Argentina and am now very comfortably on board the luxurious 10,000 tonne ship Le Lyrial for the sailing to the white continent. This is Antarctic expedition lite.

One hundred years ago Sir Earnest Shackleton incredibly sailed a 22ft heavy wooden lifeboat 800 miles through these same massive seas to reach the safety of South Georgia. On the expansive deck of our rhythmically heaving ship I’m frozen, even with five protective layers on. I try to draw the albatross’ movements with one one hand briefly exposed. The instant cold on my ungloved fingers makes me struggle to understand how Shackleton and his five fellow polar explorers survived these angry and notoriously rough waters.

How any life survives in this remote, icy land is the constant question of the trip. After the long sailing we have our first views of the Antarctic peninsula and I am awe-struck by the size and apparent strength of this harsh region. Peak after peak of mile-high mountains cloaked in glaciers hundreds of feet thick rise out of the iceberg-dotted sea. The grandeur and scale of the whole land has a feeling of permanence. And yet it is so fragile. Every animal exists here on a knife edge, each one evolved to live on its own particularly slim spectrum of prey.

Counter-intuitively, wildlife appears all around us from the sea. Minke whales break the now mirror calm waters releasing a stream of warm breath from their blowholes. Blubbery Weddel seals snoozing on icebergs barely raise their heads as we drift slowly past them. That is another recurring theme of this journey: none of the wildlife knows to be afraid of us. Humans had no contact with Antarctica until around a century ago, so we visitors haven’t been disturbing their peace for long.

ANTARCTIC LANDFALL

64˚53.40’S

Our first steps on Antarctic land feel like a hard won privilege. Not quite as hard won as the polar explorers. They would be shocked to see us in our layers of brightly-coloured high tech clothing being helped off of the Zodiac inflatable boats that gently deliver us to the stoney beach. I’ve been lucky to have seen many remote beaches around the world and virtually everywhere has had plastic sickeningly mixed in the sand. Here in Antarctica it looks as it should, pristine.

Waiting for us on land, the ships naturalists enthusiastically brief small groups of us on the wildlife all around. One hundred people are allowed ashore at one time to try and reduce the human disturbance that we inevitably bring. Again, the fact of being in a place we don’t belong feels like an enormous honour.

Cuverville Island sits in a bay surrounded by mountainous turquoise-tinged glaciers edging, imperceptibly towards the sea. Low grey clouds cloak the encircling peaks and, once we have climbed up from our landing beach, the eerie silence is broken only by the calls of hungry, Gentoo penguin chicks. We have been instructed to keep 15ft away from the moulting birds, but they are having none of that as they strut towards us, inquisitively pecking at our boots.

The three-month old chicks huddle together waiting for their parents to return with food. The distance from the water’s edge of the breeding colonies protects the young from the seals that prey on them, but means the food-laden adults have a daily icy climb. It has taken me ten minutes of stumbling and slipping on steeply sloping ice to reach the pungent, rocky roost. As the returning adult nears its youngsters a comical penguin-suited chase begins. For the twin chicks it’s a more serious affair. As the parent waddles away, its young race after it. The screaming winner gets more regurgitated food while the losing sibling has less, becomes weaker and can struggle to survive.

Last year this precarious food balance was tipped in the wrong direction. More than a third of penguin chicks on the islands died of starvation. In the same area trawlers were ‘suction’ harvesting krill, a tiny crustacean, for our increasing demand for omega 3 food supplements and fish farm food. Scientists believe that with less krill in the area, less food was available to the birds. Fewer surviving penguins means less prey for seals and orca. Many whales and seabirds also live on krill, which is why it is known as a cornerstone food source. When the fishing companies were alerted to the effects of their human-induced krill famine, even though they were fishing within their quotas, they left the area to fish elsewhere…

EXPLODING ICE

64˚53.40’S

The silence is absolute when the strong katabatic winds that descend from the Antarctic ice sheet drop. The lack of any sound, be it birdsong or distant overflying aircraft is so rare in our modern world. This quiet makes the explosive noise of tonnes of ice suddenly moving seem even louder. Multi-coloured glaciers, twenty stories high, infused with blues and algal reds, yellows and greens, reach the end of their journeys to the sea face. They have taken centuries of slow downhill sliding from the mountaintops to reach this point. As they carve into the sea the compressed energy suddenly released sounds like a man-made explosion.

In inflatable boats we keep our distance from the newly-born icebergs and instead visit a group of rowdy young fur seals that are jostling on a stoney beach. The juvenile males band together while they are moulting before they return to their breeding grounds 1,000 miles away. In the 19th century, the seals were hunted for their pelts to near extinction, but now numbers have increased. This success has meant some countries including the UK calling for a reduction in their CITES protection.

Up until 1966 we also slaughtered Humpback whales to the brink of annihilation. Thanks to an agreed moratorium they too are recovering. In Paradise Bay a group that have been surrounding our Zodiac put on a show. In the setting sun the white underside of their elegantly flicked flukes shimmer in the reflected orange light as they dive below the surface. As if this treat isn’t enough, one 40 tonne whale breaches, launching itself clear of the water 35 times. Scientists still don’t know why humpbacks do this. But to see an animal that has a body built for slow ponderous movement, expending so much energy in what looks like just splashing about, is astonishing.

ICEBOUND

65˚13.30’S

Snow and strong winds the next day don’t put us off another Zodiac expedition. We’re in the Lemaire Channel, next to the Antarctic continent. Because the icebergs here have calved off of the thicker mainland glaciers, they are even bigger than the football pitch sized ones we have already seen. Light reacts with the denser more compressed ice creating incredibly vivid blue colours that are highlighted by their astonishingly massive size.

As our skipper tries to zig-zag our 10-man inflatable boat through chunks of freezing pack ice our progress gets worryingly slower and slower. Even in thick parkas and layers of clothing the wind chill is living up to its name. Our snow and ice-covered 22-year old  guide and captain doesn’t seem too bothered. She has lived her whole life on boats in Antarctic waters, growing up on sailing yachts. At one stage we become icebound and have to back out and retrace our rapidly freezing route. I can’t help thinking of the polar explorers in wooden boats tackling the encroaching and capturing ice without a powerful petrol engine. The hot chocolate never tasted so good when we make it back onboard the ship.

KILLER FINALE

64˚44.10’S

On the last day of our Antarctic trip as Le Lyrial weaves past ice-coated islands on our way northwards home we have a final treat. One of the guides spots a thirty-strong pod of Orca. I have become used to seeing so much wildlife in these few days that the humpbacks, seals and penguins mingled in with the the killer whales barely register. The varying sized dorsal fins of orca youngsters, females and the odd towering male fin pierce the calm sea. As they surface to breath, it’s amazing to see subtle greys and yellows as well as their trademark black and white colourings. Eight-feet long seals are dwarfed as they swim next to the pod. The orcas size and obvious power make me glad we’re aboard the ship, rather than on an inflatable.

To see this closely-knit extended family group swimming in its natural surroundings is inspirational. Its sad and shameful that 61 of these intelligent creatures are still held captive in pitifully small tanks around the world for our entertainment.

Leaving the orcas, we journey into the deeper ocean of the Drake Passage heading to our final destination. As the wave size increases, I’m again in admiration of the early explorers who discovered these seas and lands. In 1578 Francis Drake sailed these same vast stormy waters in a 100ft-long ship. Cruising home on a 500ft vessel doesn’t stop the feeling of insignificance wash over me. The trip has made me appreciate that after having the privilege of seeing Earth’s last isolated wilderness, I believe it needs more protection from fishing, oil exploration and, hypocritically I know, tourism.

A lone albatross, our Antarctic gatekeeper, escorts us north to Argentina but leaves us before we make land, saying a final swooping goodbye before it returns to the frozen South.

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This Author

Gary Cook is a conservation artist and Arts Editor of the Ecologist. He travelled as a guest of Le Lyrial Antarctic cruises: https://en.ponant.com/destinations/antarctica

For more on his work or to contact him, see below:

For more on his work or to contact him see below.

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